Katniss's Daughter
by Stairlight
Summary: They were caught in the tunnels. They didn't escape. As punishment for the rebels, President Snow forces Katniss to bear a child with Peeta. Their daughter is brought up in Rebel Camp, where she awaits her death - Hunger Games style.
1. The Punishment

**(A/n: Hunger Games & its characters does not belong to me, but to Suzanne Collins. This is my first story, please comment/review. All criticisms are welcome. Would appreciate it if you give suggestions on how to improve. Even a simple "x" is also welcome to indicate you have read. I apologize ahead for any wrong usage of terms/information. Thanks.)**

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><p>If the mutts had not caught my mother in the tunnels, I would most probably not have been born into this sick world where pain has no boundaries.<p>

President Snow personally named me Hope, so that my mother can watch hope die all over again. My first and my last name don't blend well together. 'Hope' signifies a different, faraway and better future. And 'Mellark' brings back grueling memories of a plan which went horribly wrong, when the reptilian head of the mutt trapped my mother's arm in its jaw, froze her in place with the same technology they had engineered for the descending claws of the hovercraft, and dragged her restraining body with the team of rebels in tow to Snow's manor. She didn't even have a chance to yank the nightlock out from inside her sleeve.

The Darker Ages began after my parents' failure.

And so did my punishment.

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><p>I dread winters. They are always so deadly silent. The last thing I want to hear now is my sigh, probably my one thousandth, as I pick up the thick 10-inched rusty pen, which is shackled by a chain to a heavyweight table.<p>

_Always so concerned about our safety, huh. Mine in particular. _What did they think I was going to do with a long stolen pen? Ram it down my throat and up into my nostrils? Finding fault with the Capitol's intelligence quenches my unleashed fury. Some snow has fallen onto the desk, and the slippery and cold surface is visibly frustrating the Peacekeeper on duty, who is trying to keep the logbook dry.

The corner of my lips twitches. Every misery of theirs brightens me up considerably. It's the kind of thing that I look forward to everyday, in my doomed life. Unlike the melancholic citizens of the twelve remaining districts (Twelve had been rebuilt to imprison Thirteen), who actually have a shot at surviving, I have none. My life had already been predestined by the Capitol, starting right from the point where President Snow had forced my parents to mate and give birth to a child – me. Everyone here lied, but I was no fool.

When I was five, I saw my father crumple to his knees on live television, the bullet hitting the ground dramatically after piercing straight through his heart. The paintings of his death scene still sell well in the Capitol, eleven years after his headstone was deliberately put up right smack in the centre of the graveyard. I know that after I die in whatever sadistic situation President Snow has maliciously planned to throw me in, my mother's grave will join it. He promises that their headstones will be sprinkled with fire graffiti and pictures of Romeo and Juliet dying. Even after my whole family is dead, the Capitol still will want to make a joke out of the star-crossed lovers.

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><p>I am Capitol's revenge, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's downfall emblem, and the rebels' final punishment. I would have been proud, being the symbolization of a stone that kills not two, but three birds. Except that I have no reason to back up the very freaks who put that bullet through my father, who locked my mother up in a dark room for 16 years where she is forced to watch everyone she loves die onscreen – First my grandmother, then my Aunt Primrose, followed by my non-blood related cousin Uncle Gale, and his family….<p>

One by one, they were all reaped for the Hunger Games, from the pool of existing rebels. Like me, they never had a choice, nor a chance to survive. For the 76th Hunger Games, there was no victor. In the Capitol, they reported that The Head Gamemaker had accidentally taken everyone out with sonic flares. In the Districts, everyone knew that Plutarch had been physically coerced into stabbing the button to release the flare. They provided him with nectar-sweet poison to end his life afterwards. He did.

But it did not undo the pain that eventually drove my mother, the Mockingjay with broken wings and bloodstained feathers, insane, as she watched everyone she had come to love vaporize in a shower of blood. All except one.

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><p>Pen awkwardly held in my loose grip, I sign back in to Rebel Concentration Camp, which is the only place I've ever been in apart from the Wide Yard, where we, the rebels, are allowed daily training time with feather arrows and cotton dummies under the disastrous guidance of Haymitch Abernathy – another attempt to mock Katniss, whom I've never met but know is my mother through the History Lectures. They said that Haymitch used to be perpetually drunk, but now branded as a rebel, his properties had been stripped. He doesn't have any money or strength to pay for food (They make you work for it), much less alcohol. He's as good as drunk, though; half the time he's staring into space, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. He never smiles, talks, or sleeps. Not anymore.<p>

I enter the door, and stagger through the padded corridors, the inflated floor sagging under my weight. Once I had known what the padding is for, I never fail to be instinctively irritated by the Capitol's indirect insult. _Did they really think that we are so weak that we would fling our heads against the walls repeatedly to try and kill ourselves? _There is really no way out of this hellhole anyway, not even in death. They have thought of everything, even the ceilings are high beyond our reach. I grit my teeth together and hurry to my quarters, knowing that after a quick change of clothing, the rebels would be led out in a neat, orderly row to the 77th Reaping, out of the door where I had just come in from.

The clang of the heavy chains around their ankles will reverberate in the narrow corridor, making prints in the inflated ground.

My name is Hope Mellark. I am sixteen years old. I have been a prisoner of Rebel Camp ever since I was born. I am going to my first Hunger Games. President Snow is going to make sure of that. The Capitol hates me. They took my life away. My family is dead, my mother on the brink of death. Effie Trinket is going to unroll that one slip of paper in the reaping ball later on. I know whose name is going to be called first.

I am going to die.

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><p>I turn off the ice-cold shower, soaking in the exhilaration I got from being fully alert, and put on fresh, clean clothes. My shirt is not tucked in, with a duck tail trailing out the way I like it. It's informal and untidy, but my appearance would be the least of President Snow's worries, when I mount the stage after Effie announces my death sentence.<p>

I fasten the rubberized Mockingjay pin onto my left collar. President Snow had designed it differently from the original one. This pin has the arrow piercing through the Mockingjay's breast. Rebels are forced to wear it. I look into the mirror for the last time and the spitting image of olive-skinned Katniss stares back at me. Her blue eyes widen with admiration, fatigue, hatred and pride. The sudden wave of emotions, buried for sixteen years, makes my head spin. I stride out of the room, my senses wide awake.

My name is Hope Mellark. I am Katniss Everdeen's daughter.

I'm ready to fight.

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><p><strong>[Please review. Even a simple "x" to indicate you've read is deeply appreciated. My writing's bit hard to read, but it gets easier in Chp3 :) ]<br>**


	2. Fresh Anger

**[A/n: Thanks for the reviews! I wrote this when there were only two, but the motivations spurred me on to continue. Lol I know it's pathetic but I did a victory dance for each lol - you know the type where you thrust your furry rainbow pompoms in the air and just hysterically whip them back and forth shouting AYO? #happygal]**

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><p>Rue.<p>

It was the name the Capitol voters had agreed upon, before interference by an egoistic, self-worshiping sadist. The three choices put up for Voting were: Rue, Primrose, and Mockingjay (which is total cliché, I know).

But the following morning, President Snow had cleverly come up with this brilliant idea and had everyone awake at 3am in the night to witness his live broadcast on national television.

"She shall be called…." The drum rolls kicked in. The high-resolution cameras zoomed in on the weary Capitol faces that had sleepwalked zombie-style all the way to the rally to hear the fat snake holler for attention. I suppose he thought himself very creative and original.

"Hope!" Unless you were blind, you should have caught the clear confusion on their faces, each ridiculously agape mouth outdoing their neighbor's.

"Thank you," he retreated back to his nest for bedtime. When the realization that that was all began to sink in, the citizens disbanded, irked and stamping their feet like spoiled little children, their expressions leaving the district residents sniggering for the rest of the night. It's not every day that they come across such nuggets of entertainment. I'm sure that if they hadn't been so afraid of Snow, they would have probably burned off his eyebrows with rainbow light-sticks, or smother his nose slits with one of those fluffy cat-eared accessories you can get at the night markets in the Capitol.

Except that everyone is – afraid of Snow, that is.

That's the main problem, really.

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><p>My hand flies to the handle of the door that reads "Haymitch bernathy." The missing "A" had been blanked out with musty tape. I know who did it, why they did it, and I'm not going to report him. Haymitch isn't even half of the Haymitch I'd heard from the stories the older Rebels have told me. His eyes are dead, and it's not his fault. I guess that that somebody just wanted to make a point – maybe sober him up. But then again, he's so broken and dead, after Peeta's death, they have since left him alone.<p>

It's hard to sympathize nowadays, considering that we are all going to die.

I throw the door open anyway – Not forfeiting the chance to take a deep breath before I do.

I don't have an idea what I was expecting, but him threadbare and sitting in a chair facing the cracks in the dirty white wall, doing absolutely nothing, was really the most mundane thing you could do on your last day of freedom – which we actually don't have, to begin with. Is he crazy? No, I cannot associate crazy with Haymitch.

Crazy refers to our eccentric ex-kitchen server, who was a really refreshing woman with emerald eyes. I think her name was Annie. They shifted her to clean the cells deep in a part of Rebel Camp I've never been allowed into, after she stood on a gray tabletop in our canteen one day, talking about a man named Finnick Odair and moving us all into tears. After that, I've seen her only once, on all fours, polishing the boots of a Peacekeeper. The man had been insulting Finnick, taunting her, but she did not rebut. It was only the silent tears falling down her cheeks, the animal-like, wordless whimpers that emerged from her throat, which let me know, Annie Cresta had become an Avox.

I know Finnick Odair. According to the seminars, he had been one of the lead rebels. He had been my mother's friend.

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><p>"Aren't you getting changed?" I said quietly.<p>

The only response I got was the silence emitting from the walls.

Heaving a sigh, I pick up the plastic comb and drag it through his ragged hair, peeled off his rag of a top, and draped the only presentable cloth I could find over him, my fingers quick in buttoning. I know he'd hate it if the Peacekeepers do it for him.

Hell, I know he'd hate anything to do with the Capitol.

I've never exactly had a conversation with Haymitch; his upper lip and bottom lip, I swear, are permanently glued together, but we've shared a couple of comfortable silences. Usually, the Peacekeepers take him out when I practice. I always shoot straight during target practice, attempting more elaborate stunts each day and finally perfecting them, always hoping he'd nod in approval, encourage me, maybe even offer a few words of advice.

Yet when I whip my head around to check, he's never watching - Just staring at thin air.

Everyone can die and leave me dangling solo, but I want this man, who I feel understands me because he's in the same predicament, to support me. How come Katniss gets everyone without asking, while I have close to zero aid? Sixteen years I've been fending for myself, but I am going to die now, how come the only person in this cursed world, whom I feel affiliated to, is not even going to say a word to me?

I turn to leave the room, my anger refreshed.

I feel a cold, sweaty palm lock my hand in a desperate grasp. For a moment, our eyes meet, and they say everything he is unable to voice out loud.

"Tell me," I whisper, "Tell me about my mother, please." For the first time, my forced resolve to keep strong is broken, as I hear my voice quake.

He shakes his head, the beads of saltwater welling up in his eyes. I look away, embarrassed, and pull from his grip. Fresh anger from my show of weakness blinds me as I flee from the room, and fall into his arms.

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><p>"Woah, huffy princess," Jed has me awkwardly cradled in his arms, but still manages to make the situation less gawky. His natural talent for easing things is the reason why I talk to him. I steady myself and push him away.<p>

"I would apologize now, but I'm not in the mood so you'd have to live without it," I smoothed out my shirt, and stalked off, tripping over a large open sketchbook filled with hand drawn fashion designs and ideas.

I feel the oncoming blush. I'd made him drop his sketchbook.

"Your thing is on the floor," I state, before stepping over it and walking away. Halfway down the corridor, I turn back to say sorry, because I know how much that book means to him. It had been his father's.

"It's okay," He smiles, tossing his natural brown hair. "Twirl for me? Maybe I'd forgive you." Smirking, he ruffles my hair, to my irritation, and heads to the pavilion where we are supposed to assemble.

I frown and follow in his footsteps, though careful to keep my distance. Jed's my friend though, I'm certain of that. He has been here four years longer than I have, because his dad designed the outfit which is now taboo in the Capitol. In fact, anyone seen now with a Mockingjay tattoo, costume, or accessory will be shot – after torture. Fireballs will start to fly in my direction if I enter the Capitol with the rubberized pin on. All the chariots will be roasted, since everyone in all the chariots will be wearing the Mocking pin. Hopefully Snow has planned to murder us that way. Death bathed in swiftness is always better than a slow, torturous death which will be accompanied by the cheers of the Capitol…

Life sucks, but what doesn't?

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><p>I sit cross-legged in the crowded pavilion with the rows of disordered rebels. People stare and try to convey encouragements and sympathy with their eyes. I'm past caring and focus on the loose skin hanging from my nail. The silence is so intense, and I am almost ashamed of the anxiety that floods my stomach as more people stare.<p>

Then one voice breaks across the pavilion. It sounds like shattered glass, but nonetheless crystal clear.

"Katniss Everdeen lives!" The outrageousness of the outcry overwhelms and stuns everyone for a few seconds.

"She's over there!" Suddenly everyone's eyes are trained on me, and I freeze.

Then I see it. Haymitch Abernathy's bony finger in the distance, stabbed at me.

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><p><strong>[ End It's still in editing so sorry for the errors. Review please. It only takes the same amount of time you would take to reblog a unicorn on tumblr :D]**


	3. Strength in Katniss

[**A/n: Sorry for the delay, i thought my writing was kinda hard to read so i stopped but continued because someone on Review page asked me to update. It is weird, but i fly over the moon like the cow/bacon from the Nursery Rhyme when i get reviews. Which is no excuse for being weird but argh. I don't even know what i'm saying so... bleh. Enjoy (: **]

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><p>And then they were there, advancing towards him. Crusade reaches for his back pocket and pulls out a metal studded glove, slipping it over his fingers. The diamond studs serve as prisms, casting off rainbows in the harsh light. He looks handsome even in his Peacekeeper uniform, but even his suaveness is a false front for the cruelty beneath.<p>

But I am not stupid; not stupid enough to fall for someone part of this hell. _Haymitch, Haymitch, Haymitch!_ I struggle to stay sharp. The breath catches in my throat, and I am on my feet, hysteria threatening to wreck my body with shaky breaths, sweaty palms.

Haymitch – I was wrong. They weren't going to leave him alone.

Everyone's attention is diverted away from me now. They know what is going to happen next. Now they quietly await the scene that would surely unfold before their eyes. At the last moment, they will cast their eyes down and shut out his screams, shut out the coppery smell of bloodshed. They would be too numbed to cry.

But this was Haymitch! Haymitch Abernathy – My mother's mentor. White spots are sliding across my vision, sparking off anxiety. I am out of focus. I cannot see. I am about to scream, when I remember that blinking helps, and so I do. The pavilion is now submerged in a dreamy yellow tinge, but at least the cloudiness has cleared.

He is just a few feet away from Haymitch, when I lurch forward, tripping over the trailing chains sprawled across the ground, a sea of metal. Crusade shakes his turquoise-streaked hair out of his eyes, and lifts a clenched fist. His eyebrows arch in amusement at Haymitch's half-dazed and undaunted expression, as if he had just drained a whole bottle of spirits. My eyelids swell with blistering fury at his daring demeanor. I break into a run, cuts and sores blossoming on my bare feet.

A resounding slap sounds across the assembly. The blood rushes to my head, my legs have stopped moving. Vaguely, I register a woman's scream.

I look up, and suddenly he's there. Haymitch stumbles, Jed's handprint smudged on his left cheek. Crusade freezes, confusion knitted into his thick, even brows. If eyebrows could talk, I swear the first word of his ones will be "Huh?"

"You stupid, pathetic, stupid man. Katniss is a manipulative monster, and she's locked up for good now, so she can never do harm in this world again. You have no idea what you're saying, no idea at all," Jed's voice comes out fierce and leaden with a solid, metallic quality.

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><p>I growl, preparing to charge Jed for insulting my mother, but a wrinkled woman sporting flamboyant pink hair winds her trailing chain around my ankle, and I nearly fall over and break my nose. I whip around to smack her pixie-like face, but halt when I realize that the whole of Group C is staring. <em>Curse my anxiety. <em>I bend down to unwind the chains, but they are tangled. I fumble anxiously and hopelessly, while the pixie-faced girl with Capitol features holds the end of the chain. I don't even know what she's doing here in Rebel Camp. Do Capitol people turn against their own kind, too?

But there's no denying that I feel like a dog on a leash. I don't like it. She grasps my wrist, and this morning's embarrassment with Haymitch shudders briefly through my mind. I squirm inwardly.

"Calm down, my dear. Don't interfere and let the big boys handle it. He's acting for the sake of that nasty Peacekeeper, see?" She pulls me downwards and hisses into my ear. For a moment, her tone reminds me of some superior chiding me for my mannerisms. I pull away roughly.

"He. Is. Insulting. Katniss. Everdeen. And. Hurting. Haymitch." I half-spit, half-whisper back, "Let me go."

"How else do you think he's going to get Crusade to believe him?" Her voice trembles. My expression must have had an impression of sudden understanding, because her tone drops an octave and she swallows. "I knew his father. We worked on the same team for your mother." My palm is wet with her incoming tears.

Jed is yelling louder and louder from the front. His insult must not have been convincing enough. Crusade does not just want humiliation, he desires spilled blood. Finally, he resorts to slapping and kicking Haymitch repeatedly. My heart wrenches as the skin of his lips split asunder and crimson droplets splatter the ground. A ruler of red dribbles down from his nostrils, making it seem like he has a chronic nosebleed. Almost everyone has their head buried into their laps.

I bite into soft skin, and turn to see that the woman I had found so bizarre just a while ago has offered me a restraint to keep the screams in, unleashed. I feel a prick in my eyes, pushing her hand away before the tears come.

"C..Cinna – That was his name, you know that right?" She looks away.

"I do." And this time I don't bother concealing the tears that flow freely downwards.

"I'm Effie," Her eyes travel up and meet mine, "You know that right?"

Somewhere, somehow, the name rings a bell. Maybe I do know, or maybe I don't, but I say what she wants to hear anyway.

"I know."

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><p>There's a clanking of chains as people stagger forward in chains, to help hoist a subconscious, bleeding Haymitch by the armpits. Effie lets go of the binding chain, and I unravel it quickly, dashing towards Haymitch. Crusade is nowhere to be seen. Jed must have convinced him, he must have. I tear off a patch from my outfit and wipe Haymitch as best as I can. If the odds are in his favor, he would not be reaped, and be granted time to recover. And if the slip of paper obtained from the reaping ball spells out his name, he would have to enter the arena in this state.<p>

Dread – That's the word to describe what I feel every day.

I awkwardly give Haymitch a peck on the cheek, sit him upright. He drools bits of foul fluid, and his hands clasp mine, the same hand-lock as in this morning. Heaving, his words are barely audible, and I have to lean in to hear.

Laced with angst, a hoarse voice questions the crowd, above all the clanking noise, "Jed! Where's Jed?" The voice comes from the back rows, where they slot in the not-so-potential-troublemakers. He must not have seen what happened in the front. Come to think of it, I have not, either. Not fully.

"It's Crusade. He took him away, forced him to follow him outside." One of the second-rowers with barely any arm skin exposed due to the overflowing chains, replies.

I rotate around slowly, one step in front of another. Dread pumps through my veins. _Dread, dread, dread, dread, dread, dread, dread. Thump, thump, thump, thump. _My heart thumps with dread. Dread in gallons, enough to crush me.

I am willing to deny the rules, stomping outside before anyone can stop me. But stop me they do.

"Rebels of The Darker Days, filth of the Capitol, begin your long awaited journey to The Square. You know the procedure. The Reaping is beginning. It is time," a man in a suit, stinking of Capitol blood, announces.

_Long awaited? _I grit my teeth together with a click. Oh yeah, this is long-awaited alright.

"K..katniss" The way he says her name, he drags the "s" sound, reminding me of the forked tongue of a snake.

My feet tingle. I know he's addressing me. And even stranger, I feel like it belongs to me – Her name.

"Katniss," he whispers, "She was strong." Then his eyes shut with grace, and he falls into a peaceful slumber. I will have to go to great lengths to wake him up.

I don't care, though. His words that are meant for me, those are all I need – to face this all.

I step into the corridor that leads Outside, without following The Procedure. For the first time, I am defying orders. For the first time, I am unafraid. I am strong.

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><p><strong>[Hi okay i'm sry for the draggy story, they never seem to make it to the Reaping am i right! Yes i'm frusfrated with myself too... *inserts christmas camel* Review or "x" to indicate you've read would do. Thanks &amp; luv *camel-shaped heart* Rmb criticisms = very welcome.]<strong>


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